VA secretary Peake suggested some of the concern about post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury has been overblown.

Many of the brain injuries are serious but some of them are akin to what anyone who played football in their youth might have suffered, Peake told Guinn.

Awesome. Remember, this isn’t just some random Republican yahoo sticking his foot in his mouth on consecutive days – this is the head of the by-God Veteran’s Administration advocating the rub-dirt-on-it-and-take-a-lap philosophy for treating serious combat injuries.

How long can the Republican Party sustain this level of cognitive dissonance? How long before voters start noticing that all of Dubya and the GOP’s support-our-brave-troops rhetoric thinly veils a fuck-the-troops worldview? And how much of an effort will the Democrats make to expose that hypocrisy and claim their rightful mantle as the Pro-Troops Party?

I think the Republicans are very very vulnerable on this, and it’s one of those iconic, visceral flag/Mom/apple pie issues that they’ve traditionally owned. If the Democrats hammer it and successfully paint them as the anti-troop party who view soldiers as nothing more than expendable IED fodder, McCain and the GOP will be in a world of deep dark hurt come November.